An hour of opportunity…

Grateful for a surprising hour of opportunity today [the end of British Summer Time].

So sat here with coffee and the rain drizzling past the window, thought it was a good excuse to have a run down on doughies happenings since our last blog post early September. So in Chronological order (with a few photos):-

Wild Food Festival – Doughies Table

Mid September we attended the Wild Food Festival in Malaig. First year this event has been held. Cool to see an event purely focused on food, notably mentions for me the Isle of Mull Cheese and the scrumptious Old Bakehouse.

Late September we visited Heather and Pete at Whitmuir, the Organic Place, as part of the Nourish New Farmer programme. Really interesting to seeing the historic development of this multi-faceted organic farm. It’s focus must be their amazing pork – a holistic pig micro food loop with every stage present onsite. But there are so many other strands of food production weaving thru the pork production – cows, eggs, soil nutrition, veg production, compost production. Real eye opener.

Whilst we were down visiting Whitmuir, we managed a pop in to Andrew and Veronica at Breadmatters, to see their setup, get to know the development of Scotland the Bread a bit better, and got the opportunity to help bring in some of this years wheat harvest, with an old nepelese hand sickle, as the rain omonously approached the Pentland hills. I’d like to say I did it as efficiently as these Nepelese harvesters, but still got a lot to learn! Since this visit we’ve been working on our own rotation plan for our croft over the next 6 years (more to follow on that) – but let’s just say it’s looking “rye-tastic”….

October was a milestone in that I went part time (now 3 days a week) in my current engineering role, to spend more time on local food production. This month (nearly over!) has been primarily focused on harvesting potatoes and working on our cow setup (I may have to expand this blog to more than just bread at this rate). But doughies has been continuing to peel out our Saturday sourdoughs to the Deli, and we’ve started really enjoying thinking about and baking our rye tinnies, and playing with our wheat boules. Keep an eye out for them each week in the deli.

October also saw some some maintenance on the bakehouse (deepclean, moved mixer to floor dolley for extra table space etc) and some tweaking of our the blog email subscription. Previously subscribers to the blog had been auto emailed by WordPress each time we have posted a blog article. This is cool, but I’ve been inspired by the less frequent but more in depth emails from other food producers (such as the Appletreeman). So we’ve instead started a new list sending out a lighter less frequent monthly email, with links to any blog posts that month, along with links to cool articles we’ve read, local events we’re excited about and general sourdough / local food topics. Hoping you enjoy the new format, first one coming early Nov. There will be a sign up link soon (that’s the next maintanance task) but in the meantime if you want added just drop me a note at doughies [at] me.com.

Next month, if your anywhere near Invergarry on Sat 19th Novemeber, come find us a the Christmas craft fair; we’re busy plotting some tasty sourdough treats for you….